#Shape-Shifting Touch screen Buttons Head to Market As they peck out text on the featureless glass surface of their phone or tablet,
some people still mourn the passing of the physical keyboard. Now technology is heading to mass production that can offer the best of both worlds:
and elastic blisters to make buttons rise up from a device screen and then disappear without trace when theye no longer needed.
Electronics manufacturing giant Wistron has modified now equipment at one of its factories in China to produce touch-screen panels with the shape-shifting technology inside.
it made devices for brands including Blackberry, Apple, and Acer. The company also recently became an investor in Tactus.
The first fruit of the tie-up will go on sale later this year in the form of a protective case with Tactus technology inside for Apple ipad Mini.
The design includes a transparent screen protector that covers the front of the device. However, sliding a mechanical control on the side of the case raises up a transparent set of buttons
or guides on the screen protector, over the touch keyboard, to make typing easier. Sliding the control back will cause those buttons to melt away
leaving a clear, smooth pane of glass. sers will still type on the screens as they do today,
But it did let MIT Technology Review try out an internal prototype case for the ipad Mini with the same basic design.
Sliding the control on the left pushed fluid into a set of guides that rose up between keys on the virtual keyboard.
That they were ever there is discernable only by a close examination of the screen protector in the right light
But the panel feels noticeably less smooth to a finger swiping the surface. The guides provide physical feedback
when the fingers don directly hit a key, something that lacking on a typical touch screen.
The relationship with Wistron could lead morphing buttons to appear in tablets and other devices.
Tactus has demonstrated both a prototype seven-inch tablet with its technology fully integrated into its display
and an off-the-shelf tablet modified to include the technology. When the buttons are built into a device in that way their movements are driven by a small electric pump.
when the keyboard appears. e are only at the beginning of what we expect to be a multiyear partnership,
starting with mobile computing, says Ciesla. He says the two companies have begun working on the design of products and prototypes for carriers, electronics brands, and retailers.
One project is a notebook-style device that has a second, morphing screen where the keyboard would usually be
#Microrobots, Working Together, Build with Metal, Glass, and Electronics Someone glancing through the door of Annjoe Wong-Foy lab at SRI International might think his equipment is infested by ants.
Wong-Foy has written software to do that, and used it to choreograph the movement of over 1, 000 tiny robots in a complex circulating pattern.
The software controlling the robots can also move the platform they are sitting On it moves the platform each time a new layer is complete so the robotsworking space stays the same as the structure theye building grows.
Much like 3-D printing technology, microrobots promise to be a more efficient way to make complex objects in small quantities than conventional mass-production technology,
Hobbyists and small companies working on electronics hardware today make few prototype circuit boards due to the time it takes to assemble them by hand
Lithium-ion batteries are just about everywherehey power almost all smartphones, tablets, and laptops. Yet Elon musk, CEO of Tesla motors, says he intends to build a factory in the United states three years from
and a site is selected. And they typically scale up gradually. Why announce plans to build such an enormous factory specially
#The Latest Chat App for iphone Needs No Internet connection Mobile app stores are stuffed with messaging apps from Whatsapp to Tango and their many imitators.
But Firechat released last week for the iphone stands out. It s the only one that can be used without cellphone reception.
Firechat makes use of a feature Apple introduced in the latest version of its ios mobile software ios7 called multipeer connectivity.
This feature allows phones to connect to one another directly using Bluetooth or Wi-fi as an alternative to the Internet.
If you re using Firechat its nearby chat room lets you exchange messages with other users within 100 feet without sending data via your cellular provider.
Micha Benoliel CEO and cofounder of startup Open Garden which made Firechat says the app shows how smartphones can be set free from cellular networks.
He hopes to enable many more Internet-optional apps with the upcoming release of software tools that will help developers build Firechat-style apps for iphone or for Android Mac and Windows devices.
This approach is very interesting for multiplayer gaming and all kinds of communication apps says Benoliel.
The new feature of ios7 currently only supports data moving directly from one device to another and from one device to several others.
However Open Garden s forthcoming software will extend the feature so that data can hop between two iphones out of range of one another via intermediary devices.
That approach known as mesh networking is at the heart of several existing projects to create disaster-proof
or community-controlled communications networks (see Build Your Own Internet with Mobile Mesh Networking). Apps built to exploit such device-to-device schemes can offer security
and privacy benefits over those that rely on the Internet. For example messages sent using Firechat to nearby devices don t pass through any systems operated by either Open Garden
or a wireless carrier (although they are broadcast to all Firechat users nearby). That means the content of a message and metadata could not be harvested from a central communications hub by an attacker or government agency.
This method of communication is immune to firewalls like the ones installed in China and North korea says Mattt Thompson a software engineer who writes the ios and Mac development blog NSHIPSTER.
Recent revelations about large-scale surveillance of online services and the constant litany of data breaches make this a good time for apps that don t rely on central servers he says.
As users become more mindful of the security and privacy implications of technologies they rely on moving in the direction of local ad hoc networking makes a lot of sense.
However peer-to-peer and mesh networking apps also come with their own risks since an eavesdropper could gain access to local traffic just by using a device within range.
Open Garden s main product is an app that allows Android devices to share their Internet connections (see Could You Spare Some Internet access?.
However Benoliel says that won t be coming to the iphone anytime soon because the feature that Firechat relies on cannot be used to share data connectivity.
Peer-to-peer mobile communications and mesh networks could prove especially important in countries with minimal communications infrastructure.
You can see Google spending billions on fiber and balloons but this is not going to solve the problem of ubiquitous mobile connectivity Benoliel says.
He argues that the spread of cheap Android phones across the world will make mesh networking feasible.
We need to create small Internets that can function on their own and then connect them to the big Internet t
#Yeast 2. 0 Designer changes in the first artificial yeast chromosome could help advance synthetic biology.
Scientists have synthesized an entire yeast chromosome, the first artificial chromosome for the kingdom of life that includes humans, plants, and fungi.
Yeast with the artificial chromosome appeared to be just as happy as their aturalcounterparts, reports the team.
The Johns hopkins university-led team first designed the chromosome on a computer, streamlining the natural chromosome sequence
the researchers also flanked many genes on the chromosome with tiny bits of DNA that act as landing sites for a protein that can be used to create on-demand mutations.
the researchers have shown that inducing mutation in yeast using the designer sites led to some cells that grow more slowly,
Internet connections with speeds similar to those on the fastest smartphonesnd even a few early dashboard-based apps, engineered to be dumbed as-down as possible.
Backseat passengers could get streaming movies and fast Wi-fi connections to smart watches and tablets in (and near) the car.
and high-fidelity audio could stream from Internet radio services. But the first dashboard apps will be limited, spare versions of familiar ones like the Weather Channel, Pandora, and Priceline.
The first U s. model with the fast wireless connectionnown as 4G LTE around 10 times faster than 3g connectionss expected to be the 2015 Audi a3,
which goes on sale next month for a starting price of $29, 900. Data plans will cost extran average of around $16 a month.
GM says it expects to sell 4g-equipped 2015 Chevrolets and other models starting in June.
Many other carmakers, including Ford and Toyota, are following suit, both in the U s. and worldwide, using partnerships with wireless carriers to deliver the connectivity.
and that using these onboard services will be safer than furtively glancing at phones. But when drivers browse the GM Appshop,
they shouldn expect what they get on an iphone or a Galaxy phone. GM expects to provide just 10 apps initially, most of them mapping, news,
since it pulling data from the car, it locked down before it ever gets into the vehicle.
cofounder of BT Software, based in San diego. He is one of a very few developers
Called Kaliki, BT Software app provides audio readings of storiesone by humans, not text-to-speech softwareulled from mainstream publications such as USA Today and TV Guide,
getting their apps included in a car could help them market versions that work on smartphones.
In the longer term, apps will emerge that draw on data generated by the car, says GM Ross.
or driving efficiencyr to generate data for insurance discounts. Apps tapping information from many cars could alert drivers to accidents;
or fully autonomous cars (see ata Show Google Robot Cars Are Smoother, Safer Drivers Than You or I. Henry Tirri,
CTO of Nokia, says the potential for apps in cars is given vast the amount of data vehicles produce. he car is already probably the densest sensor hub that an individual owns right now,
he says. See fter Microsoft Deal, What Left of Nokia Will Bet on Internet of things. In Audi case, the service will cost $100 for up to five gigabytes of data over six months,
or $500 for 30 gigabytes over 30 months. GM has announced not pricing except to say that customers can get various plans combining service to their homes, phones, and cars.
Both GM and Audi are using AT&T to provide service (see M and AT&T Blur Line Between Car and Smartphone r
#Spying Is Bad for Business Following a one-day summit in Brasilia this February, negotiators from Brazil and Europe reached a deal to lay a $185 million fiber-optic cable spanning the 3, 476 miles between Fortaleza and Lisbon.
The cable will be built by a consortium of Spanish and Brazilian companies. According to Brazil president, Dilma Rousseff, it will rotect freedom.
No longer will South america Internet traffic get routed through Miami, where American spies might see it. She not being paranoid.
Documents leaked last June by former U s. intelligence contractor Edward Snowden revealed a global surveillance operation coördinated by the U s. National security agency and its counterpart in Britain
the GCHQ. Among the hundreds of millions of alleged targets of the dragnet: Brazil state oil company, Petrobras,
as well as Rousseff own cell phone. The big question in this MIT Technology Review business report is how the Snowden revelations are affecting the technology business.
Large Internet companies, like Google, have raced to encrypt all their communications. In Germany, legislators are discussing an all-European communications grid.
There is a risk that the Internet could fracture into smaller national networks, protected by security barriers.
In this view, Brazil new cable is akin to China Great Firewall (that country system for censoring Web results
or calls by nationalists in Russia to block Skype, or an unfolding German plan to keep most e-mail traffic within its borders.
could be the collapse of the current Internet. Analysts including Forrester research predict billions in losses for U s. Internet services such as Dropbox and Amazon because of suspicion from technology consumers, particularly in Europe,
in the wake of Snowden revelations. he Snowden leaks have painted a U s.-centric Internet infrastructure,
and now people are looking for alternatives, says James Lewis, director of the strategic technologies program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington,
so that it keeps its best ideas on computers quarantined from the Internet. Retrograde technology is winning money and resources.
Security experts have been warning for some time that computer networks are not secure from intruders. But in 2013
A half dozen boutique R&d houses, like Italy Hacking Team, develop computer vulnerabilities and openly market them to government attackers.
Criminals use common computer weaknesses to infect as many machines as possible. But governments assemble large research teams
and analysis for antivirus company Kaspersky Lab, says he logs on to his computer assuming he is not alone. operate under the principle that my computer is owned by at least three governments,
The U s. government circumvented Google security measures and secretly collected customer data. British spies scooped up millions of webcam images from Yahoo.
In December, on Microsoft official blog, the company top lawyer, Brad Smith, said he had reason to view surreptitious overnment snoopingas no different from criminal malware.
Microsoft, along with Google and Yahoo, has responded by greatly widening its use of encryption. ee living in a very interesting time,
where companies are becoming unwilling pawns in cyberwarfare, says Menny Barzilay, a former Israeli intelligence officer now working in IT SECURITY for the Bank hapoalim Group,
If the Internet and its components cannot be trusted, how will that affect business? Consider the case of Huawei,
the Chinese company that last year became the world largest seller of telecom equipment. Yet its market share in North america is paltry,
because the U s. government has claimed long that Huawei gear is a Trojan horse for China intelligence services.
Now American firms like Cisco systems say their Chinese customers are turning away for similar reasons. After all, the Snowden documents suggest how vigorously the NSA worked to insert back doors in gear, software,
and undersea cablesn some cases via what the agency called ensitive, cooperative relationships with specific industry partnersidentified by code names.
Mistrust is also creating business opportunities. In this issue we travel to an old bunker in Switzerland that local entrepreneurs have turned into a server farm,
hoping to do for data what The swiss once did for Nazi gold and billionairesbank accounts. Thanks to its privacy laws and discreet culture, the country is emerging as a hub for advanced security technology.
In Lewis view, these sorts of technological initiatives threaten the American lead in Internet services such as remote data storage. t hasn been long enough to know
if the economic effects are trivial or serious, but the emergence of foreign competitors is a sign that it serious,
the $629 Blackphone, launched in February at the big mobile communications conference in Barcelona, Spain.
the idea was that the Web had no borders, no countries. This was the naïve utopia.
#First hidden, real-time, screen-camera communication created Such applications include smart glasses communicating with screens to realise augmented reality
or acquire personalised information without affecting the content that users are currently viewing. The system also provides far-reaching implications for new security and graphics applications.
information is encoded into a visual frame shown on a screen, and any camera-equipped device can turn to the screen
and immediately fetch the information, researchers said. Operating on the visible light spectrum band, screen-camera communication is free of electromagnetic interference, offering a promising alternative for acquiring short-range information.
But these efforts commonly require displaying visible coded images, which interfere with the content the screen is playing
and create unpleasant viewing experiences. The team at Dartmouth College studied how to enable screens
and cameras to communicate without the need to show any coded images like QR code,
a mobile phone readable barcode. In the Hilight system, screens display content as they normally do
and the content can change as users interact with the screens. At the same time, screens transmit dynamic data instantaneously to any devices equipped with cameras behind the scene, unobtrusively, in real time.
Hilight supports communication atop any screen content, such as an image, movie, video clip, game, web page or any other application window,
so that camera-equipped devices can fetch the data by turning their cameras to the screen.
Hilight leverages the alpha channel, a well-known concept in computer graphics to encode bits into the pixel translucency change.
Hilight overcomes the key bottleneck of existing designs by removing the need to directly modify pixel colour values.
It decouples communication and screen content image layers.""Our work provides an additional way for devices to communicate with one another without sacrificing their original functionality,
"said senior author Xia Zhou, an assistant professor of computer science and co-director of the Dartnets (Dartmouth Networking and Ubiquitous Systems) Lab."It works on off-the-shelf smart devices.
Existing screen-camera work either requires showing coded images obtrusively or cannot support arbitrary screen content that can be generated on the fly.
Our work advances the state-of-the-art by pushing screen-camera communication to the maximal flexibility, "said Zhou u
#Antioxidant helps to diagnose Alzheimer: Experts find proof In a major medical breakthrough, scientists at the National Brain Research Centre (NBRC) have reported clinical evidence supporting the role of a novel biomarker in diagnosing Alzheimer's disease.
Glutathione (GSH), the biomarker, is a natural antioxidant that protects the brain from damage. Researchers claim that those suffering from the disease have reduced GSH as compared to the healthy individuals."
"The conventional methods for diagnosis of Alzheimer's depend mostly on clinical symptoms or biopsy which is an invasive procedure.
However, the new biomarker can be assessed by MRI-like imaging tests. Also, it can help predict the disease much before its onset,
but this often sacrifices peripheral and night vision, according to the researchers at the Johns hopkins university and the University of Maryland.
but this often sacrifices peripheral and night vision, according to the researchers at the Johns hopkins university and the University of Maryland.
This is an important step for the future production of large numbers of these cells for use in cell transplantation therapies or large-scale drug screens, researchers from the Molecular Medicine Institute in Lisbon,
The team applied this simpler approach to mouse embryonic stem cells in a dish, which have the potential to become any cell type.
#In a first, China unveils facial recognition ATM BEIJING: Chinese researchers have developed successfully the first automated teller machine (ATM) with facial recognition technology to reduce the risk of theft,
media reports said. The developers include Tsinghua University and Tzekwan Technology, a Hangzhou firm in eastern China's Zhejiang province that provides security protection for financial transactions.
improved counterfeit-bill recognition and facial recognition, was wholly Chinese. Gu said the product had passed the authorities certification
and how it will collect facial data. The news come a week after the state launched its"Made in China"campaign,
"one user asked.""How much will it take to turn my face into Jack Ma's (founder of Ali baba?(
Chinese researchers have developed successfully the first automated teller machine (ATM) with facial recognition technology to reduce the risk of theft,
improved counterfeit-bill recognition and facial recognition, was wholly Chinese. Gu said the product had passed the authorities certification
and how it will collect facial data. The news come a week after the state launched its"Made in China"campaign,
"one user asked.""How much will it take to turn my face into Jack Ma's (founder of Ali baba?(
Users stick the device, called Thync, onto their front temple. A second connected pad goes in a spot farther back on the head,
Thync connects to the smartphone or tablet via Bluetooth. It can be controlled with an app,
where the user can choose the length of their session. Users can also adjust the strength of the brain-zapping.
Each programme follows a pattern of greater and lesser intensity with cycles of peaks and valleys,
but users can also manually raise or lower the overall strength,'Gizmag'reported. The minimum time needed for the calming effect is five minutes.
The product uses"low levels of pulsed electrical energy to signal specific neural pathways, allowing users to dial up or dial down their stress responses and energy levels."
which could soon produce self-healing nail polish and a cure for cracked mobile phone screens. A team at the University of Bristol has been quietly developing the technology for the past three years.
or 10 years we're going to see things like mobile phone screens that can heal themselves
which could soon produce self-healing nail polish and a cure for cracked mobile phone screens. A team at the University of Bristol has been quietly developing the technology for the past three years.
or 10 years we're going to see things like mobile phone screens that can heal themselves
which the user directed with motor neurons previously connected to the lost limb. For the artificial leg, the principle remains the same except that the process works in reverse:
The advantage of the"feeling prosthesis"is that the brain once again receives real data and can stop its frantic search."
which the user directed with motor neurons previously connected to the lost limb. For the artificial leg, the principle remains the same except that the process works in reverse:
The advantage of the"feeling prosthesis"is that the brain once again receives real data and can stop its frantic search."
and miniature dimensions, allowing it to be used in all portable devices, such as smartphones, wearable electronics, etc.
and miniature dimensions, allowing it to be used in all portable devices, such as smartphones, wearable electronics, etc.
and miniature dimensions, allowing it to be used in all portable devices, such as smartphones, wearable electronics, etc.
functional objects in almost any form,"wrote the firm MX3D on the project web page.""Printing an intricate, ornate metal bridge for a special location to show what our robots and software engineers,
craftsmen and designers can do.""The bridge will be designed by artist and designer Joris Laarman, who helped develop the robotic 3d printer that combined the MX3D-Resin with a welder to be able to"draw"fast-setting metal structures.
By printing multiple lines, the printer will be able to create a strong, complex structure that spans the canal-printing its own supports along the way
functional objects in almost any form,"wrote the firm MX3D on the project web page.""Printing an intricate, ornate metal bridge for a special location to show what our robots and software engineers,
craftsmen and designers can do.""The bridge will be designed by artist and designer Joris Laarman, who helped develop the robotic 3d printer that combined the MX3D-Resin with a welder to be able to"draw"fast-setting metal structures.
By printing multiple lines, the printer will be able to create a strong, complex structure that spans the canal-printing its own supports along the way
the miracle material that promises to transform everything from smartphones and computers to cars, buildings and satellites.
The discovery could be used as the basis of a new kind of switching device for future optical computers that use pulses of light rather than electricity to process
and transmit digital information far faster than conventional silicon chips, they said. It is the first time that scientists have been able to create a computer chip
which has its own visible light source, said James Hone, professor of mechanical engineering at Columbia University in New york, co-author of the study published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology."
and will pave the way towards the realisation of atomically thin, flexible and transparent displays,
Creating such small light sources on the surface of a computer chip is considered essential for developing the fully integrated"photonic"circuits of optical computers,
which will in theory outperform the processing and speed of conventional silicon chips in today's computers,
Smartphones Being both transparent and conductive, graphene could be perfect for the new generation of touchscreens.
Rust-free cars Graphene repels water and is highly conductive. This combination delays the oxidising reaction that causes rust.
the miracle material that promises to transform everything from smartphones and computers to cars, buildings and satellites.
The discovery could be used as the basis of a new kind of switching device for future optical computers that use pulses of light rather than electricity to process
and transmit digital information far faster than conventional silicon chips, they said. It is the first time that scientists have been able to create a computer chip
which has its own visible light source, said James Hone, professor of mechanical engineering at Columbia University in New york, co-author of the study published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology."
and will pave the way towards the realisation of atomically thin, flexible and transparent displays,
Creating such small light sources on the surface of a computer chip is considered essential for developing the fully integrated"photonic"circuits of optical computers,
which will in theory outperform the processing and speed of conventional silicon chips in today's computers,
Smartphones Being both transparent and conductive, graphene could be perfect for the new generation of touchscreens.
Rust-free cars Graphene repels water and is highly conductive. This combination delays the oxidising reaction that causes rust t
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